Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band is pretty small

Breezy Peyton reminds an observer of a line straight out of “Witchy Woman,” that old Eagle’s song where sparks fly from fingertips. Only in the case of Breezy Peyton, they actually do. “She wears these gloves that actually shoot fire from the tips while she plays,” says a representative from the label that handles her husband’s band. “I’ve seen it in person a few times, and it’s pretty awesome.” Her husband is the Reverend Peyton. Breezy plays washboard with a dedicated vengeance in Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, which, as a trio, is something of a misnomer. Big damn sound, perhaps, considering that Reverend Peyton is one of those dobro players schooled in the Piedmont styling made popular by another reverend, Gary Davis. But in the Big Damn Band version, the picking comes out sounding like equal parts Robert Johnson and Eric Sardinas. The two couldn’t sound more different, but somehow Reverend Peyton pulls it all together.

Joe Peyton, from Eagletown, Indiana, really is a minister. He is also a Kentucky Colonel, which is the highest honor bestowed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, for reasons unknown at the time of writing. He and Breezy were married in 2003 and shortly after began writing the songs that would lay the groundwork for the five full-length albums they would release in the future as the Big Damn Band. With drummer Ben Russell, the Big Damn Band is your basic country-blues trio with the earnest intensity of truck-driving rock and roll all over it. But it’s the live shows, sometimes as many as 250 per year, that sell those records. That’s where the Reverend truly smokes, him having to overplay his parts due to the spare instrumentation of the BDB on a guitar that looks like it was nice maybe 60 years ago. Some describe the experience, incendiary as it may be, as bordering on the religious.